(more backdating - file this one a few days after the last Rwanda entry)

On Monday I met another group of traveling mzungus over breakfast at the auberge, and we hopped the Gisozi minibus over to the Kigali Memorial Center. I knew little about the Rwandan genocide except in broad strokes, and was pleased with how educational the presentation was. Informative histories were combined with impassioned video testimonials from survivors, and with the bones and clothes from victims. Oddly enough, I found that the way the bones were displayed – neatly in rows – almost served to abstract, rather than reinforce the message, taking on an almost archaeological quality (though recognizable machete marks, bullet holes, or bludgeoning jolt you back to reality). It was a weighty morning – no one really said anything for almost two hours as we walked through the exhibits. Especially moving was a section with huge photographs of child victims, coupled with minutiae about their favorite foods or sports, or their personalities. Maybe the image with the greatest impact for me, however, was an oil painting of a person curled up in the fetal position, and in the background, a burning village with tiny Interahamwe hacking people apart. The bodies of the victims were only large enough for a few brushstrokes, but something about the naive style and the vivid red splashes gave me the deep impression of art filtered through the all-too-real lens of someone’s personal experience, not just some artist’s rendition after the fact. I couldn’t look at it for long.

Tuesday I visited Butare, backtracking a bit towards the Burundi border, to see the Murambi Memorial (outside Gikongoro, a minibus trip west of Butare). Murambi was not an easy experience – it is one of the most graphic memorials in the country. In the buildings behind the college are the bodies of hundreds of victims, preserved with lime, locked in the rigor mortis positions of their brutal deaths. Room, after room, after room, after room of white, shrivelled bodies – young and old, men and women, sometimes with necklaces, or still-colourful scraps of clothing. Outside, scarce meters from the original mass graves, was signage indicating where French soldiers, part of “Operation Turquoise,” had been playing volleyball. Between the overpowering stench of lime, the buzzing of insects and the clang of the metal doors, in stark contrast to the oppressive silence – as I told the guide, “Je n’ai pas les mots.” I certainly didn’t in French, but can’t do it in English, either.

It is in some ways unfortunate that the only stops many travellers make in Rwanda are to the genocide memorials – I must confess than a third of my time in the country was devoted to them – but they are a visceral reminder of the horrors that hate can breed. But despite it all, the lessons seem to be falling on deaf ears – as my brother Christopher remarked two years ago when he visited the same memorials, massacres continue to occur around the world, especially in Sudan, with the international community turning a blind eye. So it goes.

I stayed the night in Butare, and visited the Rwandan National Museum the next morning. As as far as African anthropological museums go, I can only assume that this was a pretty good one, and some of the stuff was pretty interesting. Exhibits aside, the building itself is quite beautiful, and in an odd twist, on the walk over I ended up having a brief chat with the Belgian architect who had designed it 20 years earlier, and happened to be in town! Apparently the peaked roofs were inspired by the hills that make up the Rwandan landscape.

After an uneventful trip back to Kigali, the packed-to-the-gills minibus ride to the Ugandan border at Gatuna may well have been two of the least comfortable hours of my life. The back seats, it seems, have about 5 inches too little leg room for me, so my knees were in constant pressure against the metal frame of the next bench, and with my daypack in my lap, any movement at all was pretty much impossible. After East Africa, never again will I complain about crowded TTC buses.

(mentally backdate this for a week ago, folks)

Wow. So the difference between Bujumbura and Kigali is pretty staggering. Where Burundi is almost certainly the poorest nation in East Africa, now in the tentative shadow of peace cast by more than a decade of civil war, Rwanda has rapidly industrialized and Westernized, in part due to international guilt money following the genocide. Wandering the streets was a completely different experience – I had oriented myself wrong the first day, so while my first walk took me in the complete opposite direction from where I was expecting to go (“Gee, I’ve heard Kigali is sprawling, but there seems to be a whole lot of shacks, huts, and farms on the way downtown…”), when I finally took a taxi-moto back into the city centre, it felt downright American. Nakumatt, a 24-hour supermarket in a brightly lit mall, felt eerily like Walmart – only nicer. The “Place de l’Unite Nationale,” a large garden/roundabout near the downtown core, even has a video billboard. That’s progress (sigh).

While there were still people to hassle me on the street, at least now they were trying to sell me things – SIM/cellular recharge cards, local crafts, postcards, fruit. I hadn’t realized how perpetually on edge I had felt walking around in Bujumbura until I had something to contrast it with. While I am still, most definitely a mzungu (and everything that entails), I’m just another tourist, here. Walking back to my hostel from a fancy dinner after dark, I felt totally safe – I would never have thought I would be so reassured by the prospect of police walking the streets brandishing Kalashnikovs. The city’s development is reflected in the rapidly increasing cost of living, however. For instance, my guidebook had called Chez Robert, the restaurant I went to for dinner, ‘a sophisticated meal without the sophisticated bill at the end,’ but they were only right about the first part. Like everything in Kigali these days, it was twice as much as listed – as much of a splurge as it was, you’d need to pay more than twice as much for a similar meal in Canada, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain so much.

I spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon with a local boy named Vincent. While he had initially latched onto me in order to sell me maps or postcards, he quickly saw he could endear himself to me as a guide (and perhaps an opportunity to practice his meager English and French). He recommended good shops for crafts, showed me the minibus queue (we took one to the Memorial Center, which was unfortunately closed).

Sunday, I bought a picnic of samosas, baguettes, biscuits, peanut butter and 2L water to take with me to the rally at Gahanga Park. I took an expensive moto-taxi there (at least it was a fun ride)Being a mzungu at the rally, I was able to hang out in the VIP tents without any questions, though most of the fans were either locals or Francophone, so I couldn’t really carry any conversations. While there were probably less than a dozen cars in the rally, between the scenery, the enthusiastic crowd, and the novelty factor of being in Africa, it was great fun. And I finally have some sweet rally photos to add to my portfolio of motorsports. After the rally, I hitched back to Kigali with a crazy ex-pat Frenchman in the mineral industry. He ended up being pretty much the perfect caricature of a dirty old man - he actually grabbed the ass of the waitress at the bar we went to, called Car Wash.

Quick update, since the Internet at my hostel (not wi-fi, but they have some old computers) is quite likely the slowest I’ve ever used. At least it’s consistent, though, so it’s less frustrating.

Interesting bus ride into Rwanda. The roads all the way from Bujumbura to Kigali were quite smooth and well-paved, if tortuous and winding - I imagine they’d be fantastic fun to drive. While I’m sure you’re getting tired of me saying how spectacular the scenery is, I quite literally giggled when we crested the first real rise north of the city and I saw the countryside. I was hoping to take some shots out the window, but I didn’t get a good seat. There were also some funny little idiosyncrasies that I expect are particular to African bus lines - for instance, we stopped briefly in a tiny market/village just outside the city, where touts crowded around the bus and sold huge bags of fruit to the passengers through the windows.

In fact, it probably would have been a downright enchanting bus-ride except that the bus driver had oversold the seats, and so it was already full by the time I got on. Of course, that didn’t mean I didn’t get to ride. It just meant that I shared the back bench with four other people.

It was, most definitely, a four person bench. I’m not sure my legs have ever been so cramped in my entire life, and my hips were crushed nicely against my neighbours’ around every bend. And there were lots of bends.

In other news, it turns out that it’s Le Rallye des 1000 Collines in Kigali this weekend! While I obviously don’t have a car, I am going to maybe try and grab a taxi to a few of the stages and catch some of the action. Having never spectated a car rally, the coincidental timing here is pretty amazing.